Speaking to Pocket-Lint at today's unveiling of the RAZR M and RAZR HD, Motorola has reportedly confirmed that the RAZR M will be announced in the UK with an Intel chip, ousting the Qualcomm S4 found in the US Verizon version. Pocket-lint says the device will also get a "name change," but that just may be referring to the dropping of the DROID branding.

What we've seen of Intel phones so far hasn't been too impressive, so let's hope Motorola has managed to tame the Medfield-based Atom processor into something you'd actually want inside your smartphone. There's no word on LTE support, either.

Presumably, this will be the first Moto-Intel device to hit the market, a result of the partnership the two announced at CES back in January. The event will be held on September 18th, so we shouldn't have long to wait on this. Motorola's invitation for that event basically confirms that both the RAZR M and Intel will be in attendance, saying: "Let us take you to the edge" - a reference to the RAZR M's relatively thin bezel.

Oh, and that sexy actually white version of the RAZR M you're seeing up there? You won't find it in the US - Verizon decided to uggify the "DROID" edition with a contrasting black rear cover that looks absolutely hideous by comparison. I know, it makes us sad, too.

Great performance? Citation? I've used a couple Intel phones and the performance is definitely not what I'd describe as great. I played with the reference platform running ICS and it was pretty smooth, but not as smooth as any flagship device currently out there.

This is definitely a "wait and see" for me. Maybe Intel really will deliver. But no LTE (at least, no sign of it) and the whole x86 having to use NDK thing would make me pretty wary of walking into this with too much optimism.

ZTE just announced one, they already have another out in Europe on Orange, and Lenovo has one. There may be one or two others I'm forgetting.

Freak4Dell

I've never used an Intel phone, but if what you say is true, I'm going to be very disappointed. I am really thinking about getting a GSM RAZR M, but if it can't offer the same performance as the CDMA version, then it's off the table.

The rumor makes sense, though. We know Intel and Motorola are announcing something, and there's that rumor about the phone without a bezel. It's not exactly no bezel, but the RAZR M is probably as close as we'll get while still being practical and usable, so it fits the criteria for the rumors. I guess we'll find out on the 18th.

ssj4Gogeta

"the whole x86 having to use NDK thing"
I don't understand what that means. Details?

You can use the normal SDK just fine with x86. But if you're using NDK for your app and you compile for ARM, Atom has to do binary translation which slows it down. But developers can easily compile for x86 as well. As more phones come out with Intel processors, more developers will choose to target x86 as well.

OSagnostic

The UK ,and most of Europe, does not have LTE. It seems likely they will use the same chip as the reference devices, so this would have to be a low-mid priced phone.

I like the form factor and would have been very interested if they had used S4 without LTE (MSM8260A).

Cheeseball

The only thing lacking is the binary translation performance. If anything, this makes the Z2640 x86 chip at 1.6 GHz seem as fast as a Snapdragon S2 running at 1.4 GHz (e.g. like a Xperia Arc S).

Discoboy

Intel is still getting it's feet wet in the mobile phone space. I don't expect a super-awesome-top-tier Intel phone for at least 12 more months. Right now they are basically entering the market with $99 mid-tier smartphones that are not intended to compete with the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the like.